Friday, January 27, 2017

Ahead of the bell for this Friday, we’re seeing some of the vibrant activity from early in the week tamp down a bit. We see bland Q4 earnings released before the bell, along with worse-than-expected economic data. The S&P 500 is unched, Dow is down marginally and Nasdaq is up slightly. It’s cloudy outside, too.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Q4 2016 came in far lower than analysts had expected at 1.9%. This is the first read, and obviously subject to revisions in subsequent reads. But it’s also a big leg down from the 3.5% produced in Q3. Consumer spending was down a half of 1%, while the price index rose 2.1% and consumption was up 2.5%. But this 1.9% is a disappointment also in that we look to have ended 2016, on average, below 2% growth overall.

Durable Goods was also down ahead of today’s open, -0.4% compared to the +2% expected. This is a more volatile read traditionally, and last read we saw -4.8%. Ex-transportation was +0.5% and non-defense, ex-aircraft was +0.8%. We see clearly how big orders for things like airplanes affect these reads, and we got exactly that this time around.

Chevron (CVX Quick QuoteCVX - Free Report) missed big on its Q4 earnings before the bell today. 22 cents per share was nearly two-thirds short of the 64 cents expected. Shares of the oil & gas supermajor are down 3% in the pre-market. Colgate (CL Quick QuoteCL - Free Report) matched estimates on the bottom line while revenues missed, and AbbVie reported in-line $1.20 per share on lower quarterly sales, although Humira performed well.

Yesterday afternoon we saw solid, if unspectacular, results from tech majors like Microsoft (MSFT Quick QuoteMSFT - Free Report) , Intel (INTC Quick QuoteINTC - Free Report) and Alphabet (GOOGL Quick QuoteGOOGL - Free Report) . But none of these were enough to push markets higher this morning. It’s been an eventful week; time for a disco nap before the weekend.

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

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